The Puzzle of Lenski’s Curve  

Oleh:

Krymkowski, Daniel H.

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Rationality and Society vol. 12 no. 1 (Feb. 2000), page 25–38.
Topik: inequality; Lenski; mathematical models; social stratification; sociological theory
Fulltext: 25RS121.pdf (87.98KB)

Isi artikel

This article responds to calls for more attention to theoretical issues in the study of social stratification and mobility. As a starting point, I reconsider Lenski’s Power and Privilege, the last bold effort to create a general theory of social stratification. One of Lenski’s most interesting assertions was that the amount of inequality would ‘vary directly with the size of a society’s surplus’. However, the mechanisms underlying this relation were not specified and, as Lenski himself noted, direct proportionality fails to hold when one moves from agrarian to industrial societies. Utilizing game theory and a rate of return model, I suggest mechanisms that account for Lenski’s curve (the observed curvilinear relationship between the size of the surplus and the amount of inequality).

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